1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to document feeders for conveying document originals from a document placement location, along a predetermined conveyance path, and to a document information-capturing location, and also relates to image-capturing devices—such as facsimile machines, scanners, and photocopiers—furnished with such document feeders.
2. Description of the Related Art
Automatic document feeders (ADFs) that send out one-by-one and convey to a document information-capturing location document originals stacked on a document tray are long since well-known. In this class of document feeders, machines furnished with printing means that print text or other markings, such as “SCANNED” or “FAXED,” in an inconspicuous place on a document from which image information has been captured are also known.
One example of a document-information capturing device furnished with a document feeder having a printing means of this kind is disclosed in, for instance, Japanese Unexamined Pat. App. Pub. No. H09-18631. This document-information capturing device is equipped with, as a printing means, a stamper that stamps post-image-capturing documents with a mark. The stamper is supported on a guide rail stretching along the widthwise direction of the document (direction orthogonal to the document conveyance direction). Accordingly, a user can manually shift the stamper to any desired location in the document widthwise direction.
With the configuration disclosed in Pat. App. Pub. No. H09-18631, however, if the stamper is not set into an appropriate location, specifically, if a user makes an error as to the size of a document original—for example, if he or she mistakes the conveyed document to be in A4 landscape, even though it is in A4 portrait, orientation—and ends up situating the stamper in a position where the edge of a landscape-oriented A4 document would pass, because the document does not actually traverse the position where the stamper has been situated, a site where there is no document gets stamped in vain (gets empty-stamped) by the stamper, whereby the conveyance path is left gummed with ink, which leads to incidents of subsequent documents becoming splotched with the ink. Moreover, this problem is linked to ink wastage.